CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS. 69 



received such a shock, had never been so rudely called on 

 to produce their titles to the empire of the world. 

 Authority has had its periods not unlike those of geology, 

 and at last comes Man claiming kingship in right of his 

 mere manhood. The world of the Saurians might be in 

 some respects more picturesque, but the march of events is 

 inexorable, and it is bygone. 



The young giant had certainly got out of long-clothes. 

 He had become the enfant terrible of the human household. 

 It was not and will not be easy for the world (especially 

 for our British cousins) to look upon us as grown up. The 

 youngest of nations, its people must also be young and to 

 to be treated accordingly, was the syllogism as if libraries 

 did not make all nations equally old in all those respects, 

 at least, where age is an advantage and not a defect. 

 Youth, no doubt, has its good qualities, as people feel who 

 are losing it ; but boyishness is another thing. We had 

 been somewhat boyish as a nation, a little loud, a little 

 pushing, a little braggart. But might it not partly have 

 been because we felt that we had certain claims to respect 

 that were not admitted 1 The war which established our 

 position as a vigorous nationality has also sobered us. A 

 nation, like a man, cannot look death in the eyes for four 

 years, without some strange reflections, without arriving at 

 some clearer consciousness of the stuff it is made of, with 

 out some great moral change. Such a change, or the 

 beginning of it, no observant person can fail to see here. 

 Our thought and our politics, our bearing as a people, are 

 assuming a manlier tone. We have been compelled to see 

 what was weak in democracy as well as what was strong. 

 We have begun obscurely to recognise that things do not 

 go of themselves, and that popular government is not in 

 itself a panacea, is no better than any other form except 

 as the virtue and wisdom of the people make it so, and 

 that when men undertake to do their own kingship, they 

 enter upon the dangers and responsibilities as well as the 

 privileges of the function. Above all, it looks as if we 

 were on the way to be persuaded that no government can 



